PRODUCTIVITY AND TIME MANAGEMENT

Lose focus every time a new email pops up? Control the chaos with Outlook email. you can control that your inbound emails! You can set your Outlook to send/receive in whatever time intervals you want. I set mine to 2-hours, so I can stay focused on whatever I am working on. You can also get rid of the “popup” entirely to limit distractions too. See how here http://bit.ly/2OCS855

TRAVEL NEWS

Travel for work? Look for some interesting and valuable travel tips here each month. This month – Uber Fraud, United Bonus Miles and Charity and the Marriott and SPG merger.

Can’t make this stuff up! Uber Cleaning Fraud aka “Vomit Fraud”. You now must look out for false charges for vomit and bodily fluids of $80 – $150 that show up after ride is completed and charged. See Story here – https://bit.ly/2OvHBso

For once United is in the news for a good thing! They are matching donations for Wildfire Relief in California and giving 1,000 bonus miles to those that donate over $50. See story here – http://bit.ly/2nBFRCF

August 18th the SPG and Marriott merger will enter its final phase and launch the new integrated program. If you have status with either, The Points Guy has put together a list of six things you need to do immediately to protect your status. See the story here – http://bit.ly/2MJzoRa

INDUSTRY NEWS

Red book, green book yellow book, go! The U.S Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued revised standards for the Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS), commonly referred to as the “Yellow Book” July 17, 2018. The 2018 revision of the Yellow Book is effective for financial audits, attestation engagements, and reviews of financial statements for periods ending on or after June 30, 2020, and for performance audits beginning on or after July 1, 2019. See the updates and access a podcast for the changes here – https://www.gao.gov/yellowbook/overview

COMMUNICATION AND INFLUENCE

Tired of “death by PowerPoint” in meetings? You aren’t alone. Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoints at Amazon. In his 2018 annual letter, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos repeated his rule that PowerPoint is banned in executive meetings. Bezos replaced PowerPoint with…stories.

The three main takeaways: 1) our brains are hardwired for narratives, 2) stories are persuasive, 3) bullet points are the least effective way of sharing ideas. See the full story here –  https://bit.ly/2KbVScq

INTERESTING IDEAS

Ever wonder how you can get people to do what you want? Micro-commitments and micro-asks for building a path to sales has been around for a few years, but I’ve recently started experimenting with them in audit and training with surprising success.

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of micro-commitments, there is an incredible documentary called “The Push” on Netflix by Darren Brown. Darren Brown is a famous British mentalist and illusionist and The Push examines micro-commitments through the dramatic idea of pushing an innocent person to commit murder. Go watch, more on this later.